


The Way You Think

by NancyBrown



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Comment Fic, Drama, Kink Meme, M/M, Romance, Telepathy, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-04
Updated: 2010-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:20:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyBrown/pseuds/NancyBrown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a head.  In a jar.  And it's staring at him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way You Think

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Touchyerwood prompt Ianto/Face of Boe.
> 
> Specific Warning: dubcon

It's a head. In a jar. And it's staring at him.

Ianto takes another drink from the fluted glass he's been served. Over the past several months of his travels, he's developed a taste for this particular nectar, and anyway, it gives him something to do with his hands. He's getting used to being stared at, but that doesn't mean he likes it.

He is being chatted up by a green alien with five eyes, and its companion, which appears to be a sentient gas. Ianto is an oddity, a human in a time when humans are rarely seen in this part of the galaxy, and he feeds on their titters at his stories of Cardiff, of home. He's the exotic one, which means he's invited to receptions and events as a curiosity, and it also means his meals and transport are usually handled for him. It's better than being put into a zoo.

"So there we were, both covered in mud ... "

"Actual mud?" breathes the gas. "Decay and worm dung and water mixed to a paste?"

"Exactly," says Ianto, though he's never spent much time thinking about the components of dirt. "And Dad just said, 'Did you remember to pick up the lemons?'" He laughs at the memory, and his companions laugh as well, whether or not they understand why it's funny.

The head in the jar is still staring. As the other two move to mingle with the other guests, a short alien in a robe approaches Ianto respectfully. "Sir?"

Another thing to get used to. "Hello."

"His August Personage the Face of Boe has requested your presence." There's a note in the alien's voice that suggests the request is not negotiable. Ianto has heard the name before, mentioned as another distinguished guest at this reception. He's under the impression that the Face of Boe is there as a respectable guest, though, and not part of the sideshow entertainment.

"Of course." He follows the alien to the head in the jar, and tilts his torso respectfully.

Words appear in his mind, and by the reactions of the attendants around him, they appear in theirs as well: "You are human."

"Last I checked, yes." He expected something more formal, and now he's off-guard. He plays with his glass, and hopes he won't start stuttering, like he did when he first appeared in this time, lost among the stars and frightened.

"From Earth."

"Yes."

Now he knows where this is going, and he starts working out a polite excuse. Humans, especially Earth-based, are famous for many reasons, but in this era, the chief factoid Everyone Knows about them is that they'll have sex with anything. Having listened to various iterations and descriptions of this reputation, Ianto blames Jack, and suspects the man of founding at least two human religions based solely on pornography. Since arriving here, Ianto has been propositioned at almost every event he's attended. He's said yes to a few of the offers, figuring Jack had plenty of good things to say about interspecies sex. He wasn't kidding.

"Tell me," says the voice in Ianto's head. "Tell me of your Earth."

Ianto launches into a story, one of the several he keeps on hand for these things. The party-goers want tales of how simple and quirky his life was, so he tends to leave out the part where he chased aliens for a living. Because he is thinking of Jack again, he tells about a funny picnic they had, skimming over the blowjob he'd given Jack, focusing instead on the part where they were surprised by a large dog that had got loose and they ended up in a duck pond.

"So, dripping wet," Ianto says, because aliens really go for the stories where the humans end up messy, "we make our way back to the picnic blanket. Everything's scattered but the wine bottle's still upright, so we share the bottle back and forth until the dog's owner comes walking by, and she says, 'What on Earth happened?' and Jack says, 'It rained. Want some wine?'"

Rumbling laughter fills his mind, and it's pleasant. Other guests have wandered over, seeking audience with the head in the jar, but as Ianto starts to wander off, he hears a voice in his head that he somehow knows is only for him: "Stay."

The memory of that day comes back, like it's being teased from his mind, but the parts he didn't tell are suddenly in the forefront. As though he's on the blanket on his knees, instead of standing at a party holding a glass, Ianto can smell Jack, feel his mouth full of warm cock. Jack makes those soft gasps he always does, thrusting in deep, and Ianto forgets how to breathe, even as the Golari Ambassador bows to him and then to the Face in the jar. The Face is thinking something at the Ambassador, but its ancient eyes are on Ianto.

The memory morphs, and Jack is kissing the dog's owner, who enjoyed the wine thoroughly, while Ianto's hand is on her thigh stroking upwards under the loose skirt she's wearing. She's making soft, pleased noises in her throat as Jack holds her face. Ianto wants to move his hand further, knows he'll meet soft cotton already damp with arousal, but the dog barks, and she breaks the kiss with a disappointed laugh. They don't get her name as she goes to collect her pet, but she waves in the departing sunshine, and for a moment, he can see another future where they took her back to his flat and he and Jack set a contest to see who could make her come more times, and then she's gone.

He is standing rock still, his glass clutched in a deathgrip as the memories come through. This alien is sifting through his thoughts like he'd page through a book. "I hope you're enjoying yourself," he says quietly.

"It has been a long time since my physical form had encounters this way. I almost forgot how it felt."

Ianto doesn't have that issue, overwhelmed with sense memories of mouth and cock and arse and balls. The mental cataloguing touches his thoughts of Lisa, and delicately closes that door again, allowing him some shred of privacy. It's Jack, and then a moment with Jack and the woman they picked up from that club two nights later, both filled with regret that the last encounter hadn't continued. It is hurried kisses and quick fumbles and slow fucking in the cramped camp bed, each memory pulled out and analysed by the intruding mind.

He's going to come in his pants right here, and that will be a story for the next cocktail party. Probably earn him an invitation to five more after that. Meet the freak.

"No," says the Face, and the memories stop abruptly, leaving him staggering. The nearest alien touches his arm to help him steady.

"Are you well?"

"The nectar," Ianto lies, and hands off his glass to a passing waiter. That should be him, serving drinks and food quietly while the crème of society wander and chat and tell snobbish jokes about humans. He gives the waiter a friendly, understanding smile, but the waiter is no more human than any of the others here, and merely gives him a polite nod in return. "Goes to my head," he says to the concerned alien.

"Allow him to rest," says the Face to an attendant, and Ianto is led off to a quiet chamber some corridors away from the party. He would be frightened, but he stopped fearing for himself months ago. He's been told he will return home eventually, from an unimpeachable source. When he is taken somewhere, he no longer thinks he is being locked in a cell.

There's a bed. He thanks his guide and he lies down, shivering from the onslaught of memories.

Time passes, not much time but enough, and the door chimes. As he sits up, he sees the utterly mad vision of the giant jar outside his room. Someone's room. Is this the Face's quarters? Too Spartan, he thinks, for such a well-known personage.

The attendants help the jar into the room, and respectfully bow outside. The door shuts.

"Apologies," says the voice in his mind. "It was rude to wander through your thoughts. I know better."

"Thanks." He draws his knees up to his chest, feeling exposed, alone in the room with this creature.

"I have millions of years of memories. Species and worlds that are long gone that only remain in my mind and no other's."

"Were you collecting my thoughts to preserve them? Seems a funny set to want."

That mental laughter again. "No, pure selfishness. I've lost so much." Such regret in the thought. "I forgot about the day in the park with the dog."

Ianto's head snaps up, his mind filling with images not his own, jumbled together: faces of friends, swelling affection, Martha and Gwen both wrinkled and grey and still lovely, Owen's sharp laugh, a shy smile from Tosh, a flash of Hart, so many flickers of the Doctor, so much love, and with it, Ianto's face shown back at him like a flipbook of emotions and moments, treasured with the rest.

The surge of emotion fills him, pulls tears to his eyes which he wills away. "God. You kept us forever."

"I kept what I could." Ianto wonders if that's what brought on this change, if Jack surrendered his body to keep room in his mind for those he'd loved.

"No," says the Face, reading his thoughts again. "But that's a story for another time." His mind flows into Ianto's again, and Ianto welcomes the intrusion now, feels tendrils of thought wrap around every memory he has of Jack, of their friends, letting emotions both fine and base have equal care under his touch. But there are some he focuses on more.

"Millions of years old, and you still only have a one-track mind."

"Like I said, it has been a long time."

"I can't imagine you giving up sex."

"I did not give it up. I changed how it happened." And now the tendrils attached to the Face are pulsing, and Ianto has some pretty clear ideas of what they do. Shrouded in smoke, caught in a jar.

"Jack?"

Suddenly he feels the fingers on his body, though he and Jack are separated by the glass, each tentacle with a phantom self moving over him like a finger, a snake. His mind falls open again, with the scratchy blanket under his knees in the park, the distant sounds of traffic and the closer sounds of birds and from far off, a bark. Without touching him, tentacles stroke his balls, and play with the sensitive flesh around his hole, and his mouth is heavy with the taste of Jack, the blunt head going into his throat. More tentacles are on his nipples and at the soles of his feet, and running like hands up and down his shaft, and his thoughts are full of thrusting hard into Jack as he writhes, aiming for his sweet spot amid the tight heat, watching his face, contorted and beautiful. His face.

When the orgasm hits, burning through him like a wildfire, his thoughts reduce to one thin, perfect line of delight, and it explodes behind his eyes. He feels the Face burn inside his head, feels the echo linger for several minutes, drawing out the climax like a note held too long, while Ianto trembles inside of it on the bed. Too much, too much, trapped inside his own body sparking with an excess of pleasure that is almost pain.

The mind withdraws, and Ianto gasps, free suddenly but also empty.

"Apologies," says the Face again, and there's an afterglow coming through that Ianto thinks even the party-goers will be able to hear.

"Don't apologise," Ianto says. "Unless it's for ruining me for ordinary sex. And you did that ages ago." He's sticky, and messy, and his clothes will need cleaned, and he doesn't care.

A chuckle, which fades. "I miss you." The unexpected sorrow takes his breath away again, and he places an unsteady hand on the jar. Does anyone get to touch the Face?

"I'm going to be here for three more days. Plenty of memories left to make, yeah?"

The Face smiles. "Yes."


End file.
